The youths exchanged a glance. Ehomba was known for sitting and saying nothing for long periods of time, even when he was not guarding the herds. A peculiar man, for certain, but kindly and always helpful. The boys and girls of the village, and not a few of their parents, thought him peculiar, but nice enough in his own quiet fashion.
So the two young men did not make fun of him behind his back as he walked away from them, up the beach toward a point of rocks. Besides, they were too excited by their booty.
Working his way up into the rocks, Ehomba found a flat, dry place and sat down, positioning his spear in the crook of his right arm and resting his chin on his crossed forearms. Small waves broke themselves against the cool, gray stone. Farther up the coast, seals and merapes played in the surf, occasionally hauling out to dry themselves on the sun-warmed beach. The merapes would crack clams and abalone to share with the seals, who did not have the benefit of hands with which to manipulate rocks.
Out there, somewhere, lay lands so distant he had never heard of them, exotic and alien. A place by the name of Laconda, and another called Ehl-Larimar. A woman being taken from one to the other against her will. A woman many men were willing to die for.
Well, he already had a woman worth dying for, and two children growing up strong and healthy. Also cattle, and a few sheep, and the respect of his contemporaries. Who was he to go searching across half a world or more on behalf of people he did not know and who would probably laugh at his untutored ways and plain clothes if they saw him?
But a brave and noble man had charged him with the duty as he lay dying. As it always did, the sight of the sea and the waves soothed Etjole. Yet he remained much troubled in mind.
Half the day was done when finally he rose and started back to the village. All the bodies had been removed from the beach, leaving only the dark stains of blood to show where they had lain. Come high tide, the sea would cleanse the sand, as it cleansed everything else it touched.
That night there was a solemn feast in honor of the strangers who had died on the shore below the village. Everyone partook of the cooking, and it was agreed without dispute that wherever they had come from, it was a land of plenty, for their flesh was sweet and uncorrupted. As he ate of Tarin Beckwith, Ehomba pondered the unfortunate man’s final words until those around him could no longer ignore his deep concern. Not wishing to lay his melancholy on them, he excused himself from the company of his wife and their friends, and sought out old Fhastal.
He found her by herself off to one side of the central firepit, sitting cross-legged against a tired tree while chewing with some difficulty on the remnants of a calf. Though white as salt, her hair was fastened in neat braids that spilled down her back, and she had decked herself out for the evening in her finest beads and long strips of colored leather. She looked up at him out of her one good eye and smiled crookedly. The other eye, blinded in youth, gleamed chalky as milk. Given her few remaining teeth, it was no wonder she was finding the meat tough going.
“Etjole! Come and sit with an old woman and we’ll give the young girls something to gossip about tomorrow!” Her grin fell away as she saw that his expression was even more serious than usual. “You are troubled, boy. It clouds your face like smoke.”
Crossing his own legs beneath him, he sat down beside her, waving off her offer of meat, broiled squash, or bread. “I need your wisdom and your advice, Fhastal, not your food.”
Nodding understandingly, she picked at a strip of gristle caught between her remaining back teeth as she listened to him tell of his encounter with the dying stranger on the beach. When he had finished, she sat silent in contemplation for a long moment.
“The stranger placed this burden on you as he lay dying?” When Ehomba nodded, she responded with a terse grunt. “Then you have no choice.” Idly she fingered the lightly browned slices of squash in her bowl. “Are you or are you not a man of conviction?”
“You know that I am, old woman.”
“Yes, I do. So we both know what this means. You must finish this man’s work. One who dies in another’s arms is no longer a stranger. Like it or not, he bound himself to you, and in so doing, his mission was bound to you as well.”
The man seated across from her sighed heavily. “That is also how I interpreted what happened, and it is what I feared. But what can I do? I am only one. This Tarin Beckwith had many warriors with him, and they were not enough to save him or allow him to succeed.”
Fhastal sat a little straighter. “They were not Naumkib. They were from outside the stable world.”
He was not persuaded. “They were still men. That is all that I am.”
“No it is not.” A gnarled fist the color of spoiled leather punched him several times in the upper arm. “You are Etjole Ehomba, herder, fisherman, father, warrior, and tracker. The best tracker in the village. Can you not track that which is not seen as well as that which is?”
“That is not so great a skill. Tucarak can do it, and so can Jeloba.”
“But not as good as you, boy. You know that you must do this thing?”
“Yes, yes. Because this Tarin Beckwith, whom I do not know, put it on me as he died. This is not fair, Fhastal.”
She snorted, her nose twitching. “Fate rarely is. If you want me to, I will explain it to Mirhanja.”
“No.” He uncrossed his legs preparatory to rising. “I am her husband, and it is my responsibility. I will tell her. She will not take it well.”
“Mirhanja is a good woman. Give her more credit. She understands honor and obligation.” She fumbled a slice of fried pumpkin into her mouth. “How old is your boy?”
“Daki will be fourteen years next month.”
Fhastal nodded approvingly. “Old enough to do a turn or two looking after the herd in your stead. Time he started doing something useful. The little girl will have a harder time accepting this, but her tears will pass.” Reaching down, she removed one of the many colorful fetishes that hung in bunches around her neck. It was a fine carving of a woman, done in the shiny gray horn of a stelegath. As he leaned forward, she slipped the cord from which it hung over his head.
“There! Now I can go with you. I have seen the Unstable Lands in my dreams, and now I can travel with you to see them in person.”
He smiled fondly as he studied the figurine hanging from its cord of sisal fiber. “You mean that this image can go with me.”
“Oh no, big handsome!” She cackled gleefully. “It is the image you are speaking to right now, the image that the village children make fun of and call names behind my back.” She pointed to the necklace. “That is the real me.”
For just an instant, he thought he saw something in her blind eye. Something flickering, and alive. But it was only a trick of the weak light, distorted by the cook fire.
“I will carry it as an amulet,” he assured her, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Fhastal meant well, but she was a little crazy. “So that it will bring me luck.”
“If you’d carry it somewhere else on your body, it might bring me luck.” She laughed madly again. “I hope that it will, Etjole.” She made shooing motions at him, like a mother hen guiding one of her brood of chicks. “Now then—go and see to your wife, so that you may lie with her before you leave. Make your farewells to your children. And be sure to stop by Likulu’s house. She and the other women will gather some small things to give you to take on your journey. Meet me tomorrow by the stone lightning and I will set you on your way. I can do no more than that.”
He straightened. “Thank you, Fhastal. With luck, I may be able to return this woman to her people and return home in a month or two.”
He did not believe it as he spoke it, but that did not matter. Fhastal did not believe it either. Without discussion, they chose to connive in the illusion.
II
MIRHANJA TOOK IT HARD, AS ETJOLE HAD KNOWN SHE WOULD. He tried to explain slowly and carefully, not forgetting to include the confirming conversation he’d had with Fhastal, reminding his w
ife again and again why he had to go.
“If I did not do this thing, then I would not be the man you married.”
Lying next to him, she reached over and hit him hard on the chest, a blow arising out of frustration as much as anger. “Better half a live man unconvicted than a whole one dead! I don’t want you to go!” She pressed tighter against him, her thigh curling over his flat stomach. She was nearly as tall as he, but in this she was not exceptional. The women of the Naumkib were famed for their statuesqueness.
“I have to. He who betrays a dying man’s obligation is himself dimmed forever in the sight of the heavens.”
“But you don’t want to go.” She kissed him ferociously on the neck.
“No,” he confessed as he turned to her in the bed, “I do not.”
“Tucarak would not go. Not even Asab.”
“I do not know that, and neither do you. But you do know me.”
“Yes, damn you! Why must you be such a good man? You are going to try and save a woman you have never met, of a tribe you do not know, from a land no one has ever seen, for a man you knew only for a moment as he lay dying. I know the depth of a warrior’s obligations, but can you not be even a little bit of a knave just for me?”
“You are so beautiful.” He was running his fingertips light as a summer breeze over her forehead and back down across her hair, smoothing out the curls, trying to smooth away her fears as well. But despite his best efforts, they kept springing back up again, just like the curls.
“And you are a fool!” She placed gentle fingers on his lower lip. “And I am cursed because that makes me a fool’s wife.”
“Well then, Mrs. Fool, at least we are well matched.”
“Promise me one thing, then.” She looked over at him, her eyes moist. “Promise me you will not stay away long.”
“No longer than is necessary—wife.”
“And that while you are gone, when the nights are cold and lonely, you will not lie with the beautiful women of far-off lands, but will remember that I am here, waiting for you.”
He smiled, and the love he felt for her poured out of him like water from a cistern. “No live woman could compare with even the memory of you, Mirhanja.” He covered her then, feeling the warmth of her surge up and around him, and she sighed beneath him even as he wondered when next he might feel a part of her again.
* * * *
Early the following morning Daki stood solemnly watching, maturing in the moment, but Nelecha would not let go of the leather strips that hung down and over his woolen kilt. For so slim a child she had a lot of energy, all of which she put into crying “No, no!” over and over, until her eyes were red from the seeping and her throat was sore. Eventually, reluctantly, hopelessly, she let herself be gathered up in her mother’s arms.
He and Mirhanja had made their own farewell the previous night. Several of Ehomba’s closest friends among the men of the village had come to see him off. He did not tell them he was going to meet Fhastal or they would have laughed at him. As it was, there was no laughter. Only firm handclasps and sympathetic waving of hands as he turned and started off along the coast path. They understood why he was going, but he could tell that, tradition notwithstanding, several among them disagreed with it.
“Asab could make you an exception. As chief he can do that,” Houlamu had told him before he started on his way.
“Yes, but I cannot make myself an exception, and it is myself I have to live with the rest of my days,” he had replied.
“A short life it’s liable to be, too, in the Unstable Lands,” his friend had muttered.
“I will track my way clear,” he assured them.
“In the Unstable Lands? Where people are swallowed up by unreality, by things that should not exist?” Tucarak was dubious, his tone bordering on the spiteful. “Who comes back from those places? No one goes there.”
“Then how can you say that no one can come back?” Ehomba challenged them, but try as they might they could not think of anyone foolish enough to have attempted such a journey. Not in recent memory.
As he crossed the point of rocks that led to the seal and merape beach, he paused to pick up a handful of the wave-washed thumb-sized gravel. The merapes preferred the purchase the sandless beach gave their hands, and the seals, their friends, went along with this choice. Carefully he dumped the handful in a small wool sack and put it into a pocket, then buttoned the pocket shut. Homesick in some far land, he could pull out the pebbles and they would remind him of the village, his friends, his family. Few of his fellow warriors would have understood. Already burdened with sleeping roll and leather backpack, no one else would have chosen to add ordinary beach pebbles to the load.
He looked back. The village was already out of sight, but he could see the fires from individual houses rising into the pellucid sky. Sight of his home, reduced to smoke. What would congeal out of the smoke that lay ahead? He pushed on.
* * * *
No one knew when the bolt of lightning had turned to stone and embedded itself in the bank of the creek, but there was no mistaking its shape, or the way it made everyone’s skin tingle and hair stand on end when walking over it. This phenomenon made it a favorite haunt of the village children, but none were running back and forth along its tormented petrified length today. It was too early for that kind of exploratory play.
As promised, Fhastal was waiting for him in front of the unnatural natural bridge. “Good morning, big handsome.” She took notice of his pack, his best overshirt and kilt, the necklace of colorful, hand-painted and -drilled beads strung on a leather thong around his throat, the elongated spear he was using for a walking stick. In leather sheaths slung across his back were two additional weapons: the short sword fashioned from the scavenged jawbone of a whale that had been carefully lined on both sides with the inch-long, razor-sharp teeth of a great white shark, and the slightly shorter sword the village smithy, Otjihanja, had forged from one of the hundreds of lumps of nickel-iron that had fallen from the sky in archaic times and now littered the plain to the southeast of the village lands. “Ready to begin the thing, I see.”
“As I must. As the covenant binds me to do.” Despite his determination, he was already having second thoughts. The dying Beckwith’s words were fading.
But try as the herdsman might to shut it out, the stranger’s face would not.
She grinned knowingly, showing an alarming paucity of front teeth. “You don’t have to do this thing, Etjole. No one in the village will think the worse of you if you change your mind now.”
“I will,” he replied laconically as he looked past her. Beyond lay the barren north coast, and farther still the river Kohoboth, that marked the southern edge of the Unstable Lands. “The warrior Tarin Beckwith said that the woman Themaryl would be taken to a country far to the northwest, across the great ocean. How shall I cross it?”
“You must keep traveling north,” the old woman told him. “Make your way through the Unstable Lands until you come to a place where the making of large boats is a craft, and take passage on one of them across the Semordria.”
He looked down at her. “Is there such a land?”
“In my youth I heard tales of such kingdoms. Places where people live by knowledge that is different from ours. Not greater, necessarily, but different. It is likely you may find passage there. If not”—she shrugged—“you may freely return home knowing that you tried your best.”
“Yes, that is fair enough,” he admitted, content with her conclusion. “Obligations do not wait. Best I be on my way.”
A gnarled hand grabbed his wrist. There was surprising strength in that withered arm. The one good eye stared up at him while the other seemed to turn in upon itself.
“You must come back to us, Etjole Ehomba. Among the Naumkib, it is you who stands the tallest. And I am not making a joke about your height.”
“I will come back, Fhastal. I have a family, and herds to look after.” Bending down to plant a kiss on the aged, par
chmentlike cheek, he was startled when she shifted her face so that her lips met his. Her tongue dived into his mouth like a wet snake and he felt half the breath sucked out of him. As quickly as it had happened, she pulled away.
“Don’t look so surprised, big handsome.” The smile she gave him took forty years off her life. “I am old, not dead. Now then, be off with you! Discharge your obligation as best you can, and may the spirit of this Tarin Beckwith count itself supremely fortunate to have departed this world in your arms and not those of another.”
He left her there, waving atop the little ridge of rocks among the ghost trees as merapes squabbled for seafruit on the pebble beach below. He watched until she turned and disappeared, beginning the long hobble back toward the village. It would have been interesting, he found himself thinking, to have known Fhastal in her youth.
Better to devote his thoughts to the journey ahead, he told himself. Resolutely, he turned away from the ridge, the village, and the only life he had ever known, and set his gaze and his feet firmly on the path ahead.
He passed the rest of the sheltered cove with its barking seals and chittering merapes lying on the glittering gravel just above the steep shore break. One of the merapes threw an empty oyster shell at him, but it landed well short of his legs. Funny creatures, the merapes. They could be playful or vicious, depending on their mood of the moment. Not unlike people.
Beyond the village lay untold stretches of empty coast, for his clan inhabited the last mapped settlement this far to the north. Traveling to the south he would have been in familiar territory. Though Wallab and Askaskos lay a goodly distance down the coast, their people and those of the village knew of one another, and engaged in regular commerce and trade. Beyond those villages was the larger trading town of Narkarros, and still farther the villages of Werseba, Lanos, and Ousuben. The farther south one journeyed, the more fertile the lands became, the better the pastures. But someone always had to live on the fringes of the known world, his father had told him more than once, and that choice had fallen long ago to the Naumkib.